Ashes to Ashes 2.04
Any episode which has Chris and Ray quoting Brideshead Revisited to each other can't be bad anyways, but with the exception of one thing that annoyed me a bit, this one was great. Also, I caved and got myself an Alex icon. The beauty of Keeley Hawes could no longer be resisted.
To get the annoyance out of the day, making Alex react hostile to Jackie at first was using a cliché I'm starting to get tired off and a sledgehammery way to signal how she feels about Gene now. That being said, it's not ooc for Alex, led to the great line I used for my lj cut and was mercifully something they ended half way through the episode in favour of female bonding and comraderie. Also, Jackie was great, and her taking the piss of Gene that way was hilarious. And I find it immensely satisfying the show didn't bring up who was the father of her child, or made this even a question. "I'm becoming a mother. Damm straight. Also, note that Jackie despite being pregnant isn't solely defined by her pregnancy as far as her guest starring in this episode is concerned; she has her own agenda - finding her niece, finding out the truth about the missing girls - and sees it through.
Also, as opposed to the people working with Alex Jackie asks about Molly once Alex says she has a daughter; asks where she is. The fact that Gene in particular so far has avoided it at every opportunity makes me think there might be something to the theory I've seen elsewhere, that it was in fact Molly who got shot, and Alex is surpressing this, surpressing the knowledge her daughter is dead by substituting herself for Molly, and this is why no one ever asks her about Molly (except Jackie now).
The conversation about Sam (did he get a namecheck in every episode this season now?): so worked for me because he's the obvious precedent for Alex and she knew him, so it makes sense for her to ask Jackie (who'd actually reply, as opposed to Gene) how he lived his life in the past.
The Gene ' n Alex fight corruption plot thread continues to be executed suspensefully; I was wondering whether Supermac might not be much longer with us when he transferred Gene (because obviously the show isn't going to move to Plymouth), and when he framed Alex in this episode, that settled it; dragging bringing-down-MacIntosh down any longer would not have been believable under these circumstances. As the show has made it clear before that Mac wasn't the biggest fish to fry and that the goal for Gene and Alex was to track down the entire corruption network, this wasn't a problem. What did surprise me was the killing/suicide, mostly because I had expected it to happen the other way around. But it worked better this way. Not sure how much Gene's "there but for the grace" observation worked, though; I mean, I get the point the show wanted him to make - that MacIntosh was who Gene Hunt could have become as well - but for this to have the same emotional impact on the audience as it did on Gene, we'd have to have seen MacIntosh some good things as well as some evil ones, instead of solely corrupt ones.
Together with the self-starving from last week's guest star, and the questionable death/suicide from episode one's killer, that's the first suicide this season. In the same episode where we get a conversation about Sam Tyler telling us he was happy once he had given up fighting - but then he didn't have children. Hm....
The killing of the dog cracked me up. Nothing against dogs, but it was such a great twist on the cliché that good guys never hurt animals.
Good to see Shaz doing undercover work!
Next week: Alex meets Molly's father as a boy. You have to love the mindgames this 'verse is able to play.
Now I'm off to Görlitz and another conference.
To get the annoyance out of the day, making Alex react hostile to Jackie at first was using a cliché I'm starting to get tired off and a sledgehammery way to signal how she feels about Gene now. That being said, it's not ooc for Alex, led to the great line I used for my lj cut and was mercifully something they ended half way through the episode in favour of female bonding and comraderie. Also, Jackie was great, and her taking the piss of Gene that way was hilarious. And I find it immensely satisfying the show didn't bring up who was the father of her child, or made this even a question. "I'm becoming a mother. Damm straight. Also, note that Jackie despite being pregnant isn't solely defined by her pregnancy as far as her guest starring in this episode is concerned; she has her own agenda - finding her niece, finding out the truth about the missing girls - and sees it through.
Also, as opposed to the people working with Alex Jackie asks about Molly once Alex says she has a daughter; asks where she is. The fact that Gene in particular so far has avoided it at every opportunity makes me think there might be something to the theory I've seen elsewhere, that it was in fact Molly who got shot, and Alex is surpressing this, surpressing the knowledge her daughter is dead by substituting herself for Molly, and this is why no one ever asks her about Molly (except Jackie now).
The conversation about Sam (did he get a namecheck in every episode this season now?): so worked for me because he's the obvious precedent for Alex and she knew him, so it makes sense for her to ask Jackie (who'd actually reply, as opposed to Gene) how he lived his life in the past.
The Gene ' n Alex fight corruption plot thread continues to be executed suspensefully; I was wondering whether Supermac might not be much longer with us when he transferred Gene (because obviously the show isn't going to move to Plymouth), and when he framed Alex in this episode, that settled it; dragging bringing-down-MacIntosh down any longer would not have been believable under these circumstances. As the show has made it clear before that Mac wasn't the biggest fish to fry and that the goal for Gene and Alex was to track down the entire corruption network, this wasn't a problem. What did surprise me was the killing/suicide, mostly because I had expected it to happen the other way around. But it worked better this way. Not sure how much Gene's "there but for the grace" observation worked, though; I mean, I get the point the show wanted him to make - that MacIntosh was who Gene Hunt could have become as well - but for this to have the same emotional impact on the audience as it did on Gene, we'd have to have seen MacIntosh some good things as well as some evil ones, instead of solely corrupt ones.
Together with the self-starving from last week's guest star, and the questionable death/suicide from episode one's killer, that's the first suicide this season. In the same episode where we get a conversation about Sam Tyler telling us he was happy once he had given up fighting - but then he didn't have children. Hm....
The killing of the dog cracked me up. Nothing against dogs, but it was such a great twist on the cliché that good guys never hurt animals.
Good to see Shaz doing undercover work!
Next week: Alex meets Molly's father as a boy. You have to love the mindgames this 'verse is able to play.
Now I'm off to Görlitz and another conference.